06-18-2025
i broke my ankle
this is a retroactive blog post, btw. it's currently the beginning of october, but i finally got this set up. so i'll describe what happened almost four months ago at this point.
so, long story short. i ate shit, hard.
it was june 18th, 2025. eight days before, it was my birthday! freshly 23, feeling the strongest i've ever felt. i had been climbing outside at least twice a week, trying my hardest & training on my rest days. things are great, you know??
i decided to go climb at the usual spot, meadow camp picnic area. great bouldering, tuff is really cool to climb on. the. issue with meadow camp is that once you get past the initial boulders, all the climbs go back up by the cliff line, and the cliff line starts to get pretty up there. it's tall.
the spot of the day was the soul train area, every so lovingly named after a climb of the same name, "soul train" v8. the last time i had went, i made it about 85% through the climb, the last throw to the top being the last move i needed to figure out. BUT. before i jumped on soul train, i decided to warm up on the climb to the next of it, "amore vida" v2, standing at about 20' or so.
i bailed twice as i started to get into the no fall zone, testing the waters a bit. i should've just taken that as the hint and backed off, but hindsight's 20/20. each attempt i think about how this climb is scary. each attempt i think to myself "i really, really don't want to be up here right now". third attempt, i make it 15' up or so, move left hand to a smallish crimp, and try and stab my right out to the victory jug. i grab the hold, immediately pop off of it, and feel myself flutter to the ground.
i swear it felt like 20 seconds of falling. as i got closer to the pads, i knew something terrible was happening. i landed directly on my left foot (see photo2) and absolutely annihilated it, no exaggeration. dislocated and fractured my talus, also fractured my heel. i knew it from the moment i looked at my crooked foot that it was over, and that i wouldn't be able to climb for quite a while. god it hurt.
called an ambulance, got rescued out of the park by six EMTs who had to carry me in a tarp. holy crap it was embarrassing (??). not really sure why i felt that way, maybe because i felt silly for hurting myself in such a dumb way. anyways, the next day was followed by ORIF surgery. i had to get a bone graft from my knee so the surgeon could fuse my bones together. it ws intense. something i found myself thinking about was how i can't put my finger on one exact moment where it hurt the most, it was an entire month of pain.
SO! i have 9 screws and two plates in my foot! it's so weird to think about! i can feel the metal getting colder in my foot when it starts to rain outside. i can't move my ankle all the way, range of motion has decreased significantly.
...so when can you climb?
i'm already climbing! very lightly, but i'm doing it! honestly, i never really stopped haha. even though i couldn't physically climb as i wanted to, i didn't stop busting my ass for a second (ok maybe for the first month but that's due to pain). i have been training whatever i can, non-stop. first it was just hangboarding; then pull-ups, one foot push-ups, floor core, push-ups with boot, parallette work, push-ups, and then FINALLY some light traversing.